Sony suffers second data breach

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Sony suffers second data breach

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Sony suffers second data breach with theft of 25m more user details @ Technology | guardian.co.uk

The crisis at Sony deepened on Tuesday as it admitted that an extra 25 million customers who played games on its Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) PC games network have had their personal details stolen – and that they were taken before the theft of 77 million peoples’ details on the PlayStation Network (PSN).

The electronics giant said the names, addresses, emails, birth dates, phone numbers and other information from PC games customers were stolen from its servers as well as an “outdated database” from 2007 which contained details of around 23,400 people outside the US. That includes 10,700 direct debit records for customers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, Sony said.

The dataset was stolen on 16 and 17 April, before the PSN break-in, which occurred from 17 to 19 April. Sony said that it had not previously thought that the data was copied by the hackers who broke into its systems.

…Sony declined to testify in person in front of a US congressional hearing, but agreed to respond to questions on how consumer private data is protected by businesses in a letter on Tuesday, said a spokesman for Mary Bono Mack, a Republican Congresswoman from California, who is leading the hearing.

A few people in the comments of our previous posts regarding Sony’s woes were mistakenly “convinced” the problems Sony is having had something to do with “makers” who wanted to run linux on their PlayStations (Sony sold this as a feature and then took it away later) – but it’s pretty obvious that Sony’s problems have nothing to do with this.

26 thoughts on “Sony suffers second data breach

  1. Anonymous says:

    i’m no gamer (and therein lies the answer to my rhetorical question) but why (why) do we buy anything from Sony™?

    1. Anonymous says:

      After the rootkit issue, my standard phrase to friends, family and coworkers who asked my advice on purchasing new gadgets has been, “friends don’t let friends buy Sony.” I feel vindicated over and over. That said, I feel pretty bad for people I know who just couldn’t resist buying a PS3 (though I realize this latest hack is unrelated to the PSN issue).

    2. VRAndy says:

      Well, in this case, the answer is probably “Everquest”. Once the most popular MMO game in the world (Now it’s World of Warcraft, of course.)

      However, if you’re asking about Sony Hardware …

      Well, for various reasons top-tier game developers prefer to devleope for corporate-owned platforms, which, of course, means closed systems. For consumers who want to be part of that culture of gaming, the only real choice is “Microsoft or Sony”.

  2. Ken says:

    Fortunately my PS3 was defective and failed 2 months out of the box so I never gave them my credit / bank info…..

  3. Zack says:

    Moments like this make me glad I’m an xbox user.

  4. Oscar Gonzalez says:

    This sucks for us as consumers, but hopefully it’ll serve as a lesson to Sony. They continue to do whatever the f*ck they want with our stuff, and while they seem to innovate certain things, they insist on doing things “their own way” and keep on making mistakes. Enough already, I would venture to speculate that these data breaches are results of them “rolling their own” databases, servers and stuff instead of using industry standard proven systems that are reliable and secure.

    1. migpics says:

      For a second there, I thought you were talking about Apple.

      1. Oscar Gonzalez says:

        It very well could have been LOL.

  5. Anonymous says:

    You’re not taking on board what this means to the 100 million involved: you trusted your most personal data to a corporation which compromised it. You can never ever use that data again, because sure as eggs is eggs some clever nasty has it in an extension to the UPP databases. Wherever you go, you can never again use basic tools which form part of the core operating base of our civilisation, for exaactly that same reason. And when you ask them what they intend doing about it, you get a run-around, denying responsibility and refusing appeals to higher levels, you’re really stuffed.
    In my case, it started with a Bank releasing my data to Epsilon for marketing purposes, for no good reason. I first heard about it through another arm of the same bank, although they refused to contextualise their alert. It took them four months to own up, and they still refuse to take any responsibility. Instead, I have to put up with yet more of the same crap from them in the form of Verified by bullshit – if, that is, I still use their systems, which I don’t. They claim there is no link between the two incidents, which if anything makes it worse, because they would then have compromised my data twice. And this is a bank, supposedly safe as houses, but in practice a sick den of unconscionable gamblers who’d sell their fathers down the river if they knew who they were.
    Data protection should be about protecting the individual. However, a sick twisting of the law designed to keep the computer industry alive means it’s actually about protecting industry. It’s time to start refusintg to play their game.

  6. migpics says:

    Phillip,
    Here’s an interesting article about Norways policy on Sony regarding playstation 3.
    http://forbrukerportalen.no/Artikler/2011/%20PlayStation_3_violates_the_Norwegian_Marketing_Control_Act
     

  7. migpics says:

    Phillip,
    Here’s an interesting article about Norways policy on Sony regarding playstation 3.
    http://forbrukerportalen.no/Artikler/2011/%20PlayStation_3_violates_the_Norwegian_Marketing_Control_Act
     

  8. migpics says:

    Phillip,
    Here’s an interesting article about Norways policy on Sony regarding playstation 3.
    http://forbrukerportalen.no/Artikler/2011/%20PlayStation_3_violates_the_Norwegian_Marketing_Control_Act
     

  9. migpics says:

    Phillip,
    Here’s an interesting article about Norways policy on Sony regarding playstation 3.
    http://forbrukerportalen.no/Artikler/2011/%20PlayStation_3_violates_the_Norwegian_Marketing_Control_Act
     

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